It's Canada Day
Back home on Earth
Not that I've been the partying kind
For most of my life
But it's still the land of my birth
And where I lived
For forty years
And thought I'd live
For the fifty that followed it
As sixty seemed too perfectly round a number
For me to live
But all my plans changed
One terrible night
When my ear was aching
When my old problem
Reared right up
And said remember me
Even though I'd been attentive
To the problem yes
And taken care
To plug my ears
Whenever my head
Was about to be
In the water yes
Save for once
In the past few weeks
And it's a certain bother
That it would only take once
For that but being
All that it took
For a single ear
To quietly ache
And annoyingly oblige me to take
A round of treatments
Because it always got in the way
Of the doings of my day
In spite of that
Or maybe because of it
I needed to get out of my place
And go for a walk
Because I needed to stretch my legs
And see more than the walls
Of my little falt
As much as I liked it
It had been too many days running
Without a good walk around
So I stepped out into the night
Dressed in a simple black tee
My favourite shorts
And my trusty runners
Not that I planned on daoing any running
But they were comfy yes
And made me feel
Like I was a success
And not still looking
For some of my own
Doing the thing
That I was meant to do
Thankfully the night had cooled
From the heat of the day
And a breeze had even sprung up
Which should have been enough
To lift my mood
Because I had an image
Inside my mind's eye
About a figure in the dark
With the breeze but dancing around
As if it was happy
To be but near him
And this just that kind of breeze
But maybe my spirits
Weren't meant to be lifted
With my ear but bothering me
Like that was the way that it should be
Though being true
It wasn't just that
It was also the latest failing
Of the grand old team
Who'd hit the wall
To live the dream
Of hoisting the Cup again
For the 60th time
Which would have put them up
By forty over
Their own failings
Which still left them yes
With a record
That none could match
No matter how good they looked
For years at a time
The Grand Old Club
Would emerge again
And win a few
Just to remind them all
There was only one
That could stand at the top
And it was them
Just not this year
As they'd failed in the 3rd
To live up to the history
And win it for
That 60th time
Which had seemed like it was theirs for the taking
Until it wasn't
Though it was definitely the ear
That was the pressing problem
Which I couldn't begin to solve
Before the next day
Came along
Which was many hours away